Matchmaker 06: June

I smiled as my gaze traveled over the elegant wedding invitation. Mr. James Watson Hurley had asked for the hand of Ms. Jacqulyn Leigh Perry in matrimony. I'd placed Ms. Perry as a companion with Mr. Watson almost eighteen months ago, setting them up in private villa in Italy for six weeks. They'd seemed very happy during my follow up call, and I was pleased to see things were still going well for them. I didn't know how many of my clients ended up marrying their companion, but I received one or two wedding invitations a year on average.

I flicked the card with my finger as I thought. My latest client was looking for someplace warm, and the companion I'd selected for him had never been south of the Mason Dixon line. As I recalled, one of Mr. Hurley's homes was in South Carolina or Georgia, and considering his net worth, it was likely the houses were very nice. I sat down at my desk and drummed my fingers, thinking, before I opened my contacts and looked up Mr. Hurley's number. Considering I'd introduced him to his fiancée, he owed me a favor. I found his number and dialed.

"Jim."

"Mr. Hurley, this is Brooklyn Lancaster. How are you?"

"Brooklyn! It's so good to hear from you!"

"I received my invitation today. Congratulations."

"Thank you. Thank you very much... for everything."

"I'm glad things worked out between you and Ms. Perry."

"We couldn't be happier. Will you be coming to the wedding? I'll send my plane to pick you up and fly you home."

I smiled to myself. "Perhaps. May I get back to you a little closer to time?"

"Of course! Jacki would love it if you could make it."

"I'll let you know." I paused before I changed the subject. Like most of my clients, in the heated rush of first love, Jim and Jacki had promised their help. I sometimes took my clients up on their offers of help, strictly to help other clients, but this was a pretty big ask. "I'd like to ask a favor, if I might."

"Anything. Just ask."

"Don't you own a home in Georgia or South Carolina somewhere?"

"Yes, in Charleston."

"Would you consider renting it to me for the month of June? It's for another client. Of course, I will insure the property against damage and have it thoroughly cleaned once the client leaves."

"I think that will be fine. I only use the home in the winter. It's too hot there in the summer, but there's no need to rent it. Considering what you did for me, for us, you can use it for free."

I smiled. Jim was a good guy. "Thank you for your kind offer, but I'll have to decline using it for free. You understand how this works. If I can't pay you for the use of the home, then my client and his companion could be considered guests, then if anything happens..."

"I hardly think that's going to be a problem, Brooklyn."

"Neither do I, but nevertheless, there are liability issues."

"I understand. Then of course, I'd be happy to rent the property to you for a month."

"Can you tell me about the place?"

"Sure. It's in a gated community in Charleston. It's on the salt marsh with access to Clark Sound and Charleston Harbor through Schooner Creek and the canals."

"Salt Marsh?"

"When the tide comes in, it fills with water, and when the tide goes out, it becomes a marsh again."

"Oh, okay. Got it. How big is the house?"

He chuckled. "Big enough for two for a month. About six thousand square feet. It also has a pair of boat garages on the canal."

I began nodding. That was certainly big enough. I did some quick mental calculations. "I'd like to rent the house, from May twenty-eight to June twenty-ninth. Will that inconvenience you?"

"Not at all."

"Will sixty thousand for the month be enough?"

"Considering I'd let you use the house for free, that's more than acceptable."

I nodded. "I will take out a two hundred-thousand-dollar insurance policy against any damages."

"That should cover it. The place is fully stocked except for food. If you make sure the boat and car are covered under the insurance policy, they're welcome to use those as well."

"What kind of car and boat? I ask only to know if I need to raise the amount of the coverage."

"2017 Range Rover and a 2013, thirty-eight-foot, Formula Fastech 382."

"And the replacement value of both, if they were destroyed? Your best guess."

He paused for a long moment as he thought. "A million should do it. The boat alone is worth almost seven hundred thousand."

I nodded to myself. "Okay. I'll take the policy out for 1.5 million. That should cover any damages."

"Yes. Anything short of a hurricane, and my homeowners will cover that."

"I'll get the contract and paperwork to you as soon as possible. If you agree, please sign it and return it to me."

"You got it... on one condition."

A small chill ran through me. "What?"

"You have to seriously consider coming to our wedding."

I smiled. "Deal."

I rumbled south and east in my '57 Chevy Bel Air convertible, occasionally smiling and waving at people passing as they gave me a thumbs up. I had the top up to block the sun, the windows down for fresh air, and I'd said I wanted to go someplace warm, but as I wiped the bead of sweat from my forehead, I was prepared to admit that mistakes may have been made.

I'd left Bismarck, North Dakota, two days ago for Charleston, South Carolina. I spent my first night, after a hard twelve-hour drive, in Chicago, Illinois. After another twelve hours behind the wheel the next day, I'd reach Charlotte, North Carolina. I'd left Charlotte at seven this morning, and now, at ten, I was only about an hour outside of Charleston. Virginia was scheduled to arrive at Charleston International at one, and I'd be there to meet her.

I didn't mind the drive. I'd seen a lot of beautiful country, and traveling anywhere in my '57, a favorite of my collection, made any time behind the wheel time well spent. I wiped at my brow again. On the other hand, the Porsche had air conditioning.

Being born and raised in North Dakota, I was starting to get a taste for what hot meant. According to my phone it was going to be almost ninety today, and with the bright, southern sun, I was feeling every degree. I'd started the trip with the Bel Air's top down, but the farther south I'd traveled the more uncomfortable I'd become. When I stopped for gas in Kentucky I threw in the towel and put the top up to block the sun. Having the top up helped, but it was still hot!

I motored on, the 283 V8 purring under the hood, following my phone's GPS until I saw signs directing traffic to the airport. I followed the signs and parked the car in the lower parking deck so it wouldn't sit and bake in the sun, sighing in relief as I entered the blessed coolness of the airport. I had almost ninety minutes to kill, so I settled into the only restaurant in front of the security checkpoints. Typical for an airport, the bar and grille was overpriced, but at least I could get a beer and the air conditioning was working.

Fifteen minutes before Virginia's flight was scheduled to arrive, I paid my tab, picked up my folded sign, and made my way to baggage claim to wait for her arrival. I waited until I saw her flight had arrived and unfolded my sign at the bottom of the escalator where she couldn't miss me.

The sign wasn't large, only about two foot by two and a half foot, but I'd had my art department run it up so it was a little more presentable than my scrawled handwriting. Virginia's name was large, front and center, with Welcome to Charleston below almost as large. A palmetto tree, as seen on the South Carolina flag, decorated each corner for a bit of flourish. I'd wanted to put her last name on the sign, in case there were two Virginia's on the flight meeting someone, but Brooklyn steadfastly refused to give me Virginia's last name. All I knew was her first name was Virginia and she was flying into Charleston from Philadelphia.

As a knot of people approached, I held the sign to my chest and waited. I immediately discarded women traveling with kids or families and women over fifty or so. That narrowed my selection to a handful. My gaze fell to a very attractive woman in her early twenties. She was tall, slender, with blonde hair dyed with red, blue, and green streaks. She smiled at me and I smiled back. She wasn't normally the type of girl I went for, if I had a type, but I was keeping an open mind.

I opened my mouth to say hello and introduce myself as her gaze slid past mine. I turned enough to see a man about her age with bleached hair dyed a vibrant blue smiling in return. The woman rushed past me to throw herself into his arms.

I turned back to the stragglers where a pixie was approaching, her eyes hesitant. "Shelby?"

"Virginia?"

She nodded, smiled, and extended her hand. "Virginia McKay. Nice to meet you."

I took her dainty hand into my paw like grip. "Nice to meet you, Virginia. Shelby Rockford."

I was careful not to squeeze too hard, afraid I'd break her hand. She was tiny, probably not much over five one or five two, and at six foot and a bit, I towered over her. I didn't want to stare, but it was difficult to tear my gaze away. She might be shorter than the average woman, but what she lacked in height she made up for in beauty.

She had a slender, athletic body, but what really captured me were her eyes. They were large and such a vivid blue it was almost as if they were being lit from behind, their color making me think of a crystalline lake reflecting a bright summer sky. Her features were delicate, with a small nose and full lips that were quick to smile, and her sandy brown hair cascaded around her face in a short mass of curls that stopped at her shoulders, giving her a fun and carefree aura.

By force of will, I forced myself to not stare. "Welcome to Charleston."

Her smile spread. "Thank you."

"Shall we get your luggage?" I escorted her where a group of people were waiting, tossing the sign in the first trash bin I could find. "Are you from Philadelphia or was that where your flight came from?" I asked to fill the growing silence.

"Willow Grove, just outside Philadelphia. You? I can tell you're not from around here."

"Bismarck, born and raised."

"North Dakota?"

I nodded. "That's right. I've never seen the ocean. That's one of the things I wanted to do."

She nodded. "I've seen the ocean, from Atlantic City, but that's as far south as I've been."

I smiled and nodded. "A first for both of us, then."

She nodded in agreement before we lapsed into another, slightly uncomfortable silence. I was trying to think of something to say to her when a loud buzzer began shrilling and a red strobe flashed over one of the carousels. We moved with the crowd to where the luggage would appear and waited in the knot.

"That's my bag," she said. "The pink one," she added, pointing to a bright pink hard sider that was gliding along on the belt. I grabbed it, pulled it off the conveyer, and set it on the floor beside her. "One more. The green one." I pulled a near identical case off the conveyer, and then picked up the pink one.

"This it?"

"Yep."

"I bet you don't have to worry about people mistaking your bag for theirs."

She grinned. "Nope. That's why I have them. I have another pink one, a blue one, and a red one at home. I pick them up at garage sales for when I fly. As you noticed, they're easy to spot, I don't think anyone will steal it, and when it gets beat to pieces, I throw it away and go to the next one. I think I paid five dollars for the green one, and maybe six or seven for the pink one."

I nodded. It actually made good sense. Smart and beautiful. That was a deadly combination. "Good flight?" I asked as we made our way to the car, struggling to fill the growing silence. I envied men with their smooth lines that charmed the ladies.

"Not bad. Typical crap flying out of Philadelphia." She paused. "Is that our car?"

I smiled. "Yeah."

"Wow! Where'd you rent that?"

"I didn't. It's mine."

"Yours?" she asked in confusion. "Wait, you drove from Bismarck?"

"Yeah."

"Are you crazy?" she asked, but she was smiling.

"Maybe. I don't fly. If I can't drive there, I don't go."

I popped the trunk and hefted her cases into the trunk. Now that I was thinking about it, I should get some suitcases like hers. Her bags fit in with the character of the car much better than my modern leather luggage did.

"Wow," she breathed again. "This thing is something," she said, her graze caressing the car. "Can we put the top down."

"If you want, but it makes it even hotter than it already is."

"I don't care! Driving this thing with the top up is just doing it wrong. It's a Chevy, I can see that, but what is it?"

I slammed the trunk. "'57 Bel Air in Larkspur Blue." I opened the door for her and she settled inside. I saw her looking around. "Sorry, no seatbelts."

"Oh." She grunted.

I flopped into the car, started it, and started the top motoring down. "The car didn't have them when new, so I didn't install them."

"You did the work yourself?"

"All but the paint, interior, and top."

She looked around again. "Amazing. I'm almost afraid to ask how much."

I grinned. "About one-thirty to restore, plus another thirty for the car itself. It's a fuelie convertible, and that makes it rare. Especially this one. It's loaded. The only option it doesn't have is factory air." I grinned as I backed out of the parking space. "You don't really need air conditioning in Bismarck if you have a convertible."

She looked at me with wide eyes. "No, I guess not. It's an amazing car. Did you drive it all this way to impress me? If you did, it worked."

"No," I said as I stopped in the shade of the parking deck to pull up our next location, the house where we were staying, on my phone's GPS. "Like I said, I don't fly." I punched the button and the phone started giving me directions.

"Can I ask why?"

I shrugged. "Sure. I was on the UND ice—that's the University of North Dakota, by the way—ice hockey team. We were returning from playing the Quinnipiac Bobcats when the plane made a bad landing in a storm and skidded off the runway. They don't call it a crash, but I do. I don't care what they say, when you break your airplane in a landing, it's a crash. Nobody was seriously hurt, but we got tossed around pretty good and the firetrucks showed up. That was the last away game of my senior year, and I haven't set foot on an airplane since." I smiled at her. "I survived one plane crash with just a bump on the head from stuff falling out of the overhead bins. I figure I've used up all my luck for flying and don't want to tempt fate."

She nodded. "Yeah, understandable."

We rode in silence, and once again I struggled to find words. I didn't know how to talk to women, except in a professional manner, and this was anything but. I rolled to a stop before a set of heavy gates.

"How do we get in?" she asked.

"I have a code." I looked at my phone and typed in the code Brooklyn had given me on the keypad at the gate. The gates clicked and slowly opened. As soon as there was enough room, I drove through, watching the gates close behind me in the rearview mirror. I followed the winding road with what appeared to be a park on my left and huge houses on the right. I couldn't see the ocean, but I could smell it. I turned into the drive of the house that matched the address Brooklyn had given me.

"This is some place," Virginia breathed.

"Yeah," I agreed. I pulled up to the first door, and as she waited in the car, I typed in another code on the garage.

The door slowly rumbled up and I pulled the Chevy inside. There was an empty stall, and in the far stall, nearest the door into the house, sat a gleaming white Range Rover. Before I could get around the car, she'd opened her door and stepped out. I winced to myself as she slammed the door shut but said nothing. I again opened the trunk and lifted out her two bags, along with my two, setting the four bags on the polished concrete floor of the garage and shutting the trunk. I picked up her two bags.

"I can get those."

"I've got them. Leave those," I added when she started to pick up my bags. "I'll come back for them."

She started to ignore me, but after she picked them up, she sat them down again. "Yeah, okay."

I led her inside. The huge kitchen was amazing with a polished wood floor, granite counter tops, a six-burner stove, and large stainless-steel appliances. If the house was anything like the kitchen, it was probably amazing.

We wandered through the house, her bags in my hands, before we decided all the bedrooms were upstairs. "Which room do you want?"

She peaked into each bedroom. The master suit was obvious, but the other three bedrooms all appeared to be the same. "Any is fine. That one," she said, picking the room on the opposite end of the hall from the master suite. I tossed her suitcases onto the king size bed. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. I'll go get my bags while you unpack."

I left her to her task and returned with my own bags. Since she hadn't selected the master suite, I took that. I knew from Brooklyn this was someone's vacation home, but all the clothes had been removed from our closets and drawers, and I wondered where they'd gone. If the owner could afford this as his second or third house, he or she could afford to leave a wardrobe here so they wouldn't have to move clothes back and forth. As I finished hanging the last of my clothes, I smiled to myself. Brooklyn was very good at her job, and she'd apparently thought of everything.

"I'm finished," Virginia said as I stepped out of the large walk in closet.

"Me too."

She looked around. "This is some place."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah."

I stepped to the large window overlooking the yard with the salt marsh beyond. There was a long wooden dock, low to the ground, leading from the yard almost a hundred yards to a large garage like structure at the edge of a small river. That must be the boathouse, and I was interested in seeing the boat Brooklyn said was at our disposal. We went back downstairs and explored the house in more depth. The place had everything we needed to keep us entertained, from a game room complete with a pool table and giant television to a swimming pool.

What the house didn't have was food. With the exception of some canned vegetables in the pantry, there was nothing in the kitchen, though it was well stocked with high quality cookware and utensils.

"Looks like we need to go shopping," I said as I closed the refrigerator door.

She looked at me, a bemused smile on her face. "I guess we should get to it, then."

I nodded, grabbing the set of Range Rover keys occupying a bowl on the counter beside the garage door as we left.

Shelby and I put away groceries in relative silence. I didn't know what to make of him. I'd tried to engage him in conversation several times since he'd picked me up at the airport, but I was having to do most of the heavy lifting. He would answer my questions, his voice friendly and warm, but once he did, he lapsed into silence again.

It was almost as if he were shy, which was hard to believe considering the way he looked. Standing at least six feet tall, if not a little more, he was a damn good-looking guy. Wearing a loose-fitting shirt and shorts, it was hard to get a good idea of what he looked like under his clothing, but from what I could see, he had nothing to be ashamed of. His bulging biceps and thickly muscled legs certainly hinted that he was packing some serious muscle. Another clue to his power was how he slung my bags around. Though I could carry my bags, they were heavy as shit, but he tossed them around like they weighed nothing at all. Not to mention his bags. It would have taken both hands for me to lift and carry even one of his bags, yet he'd carried both without apparent effort.